Texas Winter 2024-2025

[Ntxw]

Excellent trends today. Subtle at times but there nonetheless. Better than yesterday. Euro awaits.

Brings back some Feb 2010 vibes where we lived right on the edge. That transition was just south of I-20 barely. We were reading the NWS and Wxman57 tell us the warm air above on that morning was going to cut off the totals but it never happened that day. About as edgy as it got!

Truly an amazing snowstorm. And this set up is certainly giving out Feb 2010 vibes. Someone is going to be chilled to the bone with cold rain and someone 2 miles north will have inches of heavy flakey snow. I hope I'm the latter.

I don't know if we will something crazy like that, but the idea is we have lived much closer to the edge than this, even during the event.

[orangeblood]

Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t it said here that the precipitation would lower temps at the surface?

For the most part. There’s sometimes a substantial nose that warms precip to rain and if you’re just below freezing, when it hits the surface, it releases heat and can raise temps above freezing. It’s kinda rare but it was a problem for a couple of storms in 2014-2015.

Heavy rain passing through a warm, moist layer drags some of the warmth to the surface. Lighter rain tends to evaporate in dry air, which lowers surface temperatures.

That’s if you have around a plus 3 deg C type warm nose. This is not the case with this event particularly for large part of North Central Texas. these are very marginal warm layers, barely above freezing. High QPF is what you want to suppress the temps lower in this situation particularly during the daylight hours, You can go from 1-2” to 6-8” quickly with just a 1-2 deg difference in the upper layers

[Ntxw]

Folks will like the latest RAP. Cross your fingers for that one.

[Brandon8181]

Hello friends,

I don’t believe we are close to bust territory.

So I’ve just been glancing through today as my wife was having surgery, but I just sat down and took a detailed look at all the models and it appears at-least the majority of them still bring winter weather to the area. No, it doesn’t look as significant as the early numbers, but in our hearts we know that those early outputs of 10 billion inches of snow are usually and typically a little far fetched.

I believe based on current data that it appears that most in North Texas, northeast Texas, and East Texas will get some kind of winter precipitation.

Some bring a strong winter storm, and others bring very little, but we have always been taught to blend, and when I blend I see winter weather.

I think at this time it really is still hard to predict amounts due to the in consistency of these runs.

Best of luck everyone. Euro should start running soon and looking forward to a full batch in the morning as we move toward now casting.

[Quixotic]

Heavy rain passing through a warm, moist layer drags some of the warmth to the surface. Lighter rain tends to evaporate in dry air, which lowers surface temperatures.

Yep. Which was the case in the storms I mentioned. It was 28, started raining and temp rose to 32. Latent heat release is the term IIRC.

Living in Texas my whole life it seems like events like that are a dime a dozen. I don’t think that’s what we’re dealing with now though. The potential warm nose is only a degree or so above the surface temps from what I’ve seen on recent models. The setups I can recall where this was a huge issue involved much warmer, moist air, around 5-10F above freezing, overrunning a very shallow sub freezing arctic airmass.

I’d say more than half of them turn out to be disappointing. Just have to grit your teeth and keep expectations to a minimum. 2015 ended with a banger of a storm. Had wind blown snow sculptures on my roof

[Stratton23]

CMC guidance is delayed, I suspect it will be a couple pf hours before it starts running, happens occasionally

[cheezyWXguy]

I agree with Txtwister78. We have marginal cold air and there will be winners and losers. There is with every winter event, but a true arctic airmass would most likely get more people in the game. Waa can destroy winter hopes for sure lol

A true arctic airmass has a higher chance of suppressing a system and scouring moisture too though. Just goes to show what a delicate balance you need for a high end winter storm in Texas.

Not when you have systems like that coming out of the SW (Baja). That is typically a big-ticket event when you can get the southern branch involved as opposed to relying on just some impulse riding the arctic boundary where yes moisture can be more limited. These type of setups have brought big snowstorms in the past. The issue if you want more winter weather is when you have minimal cold and you have to rely strictly on one source for it, then it becomes more complicated as you're seeing today. So no this was a good setup in certain aspects but as I've stated before, to get big winter weather events you typically need more than one to align.

I don’t think either of our statements are false to be honest, or even in conflict. I would kill for a setup like the one you mention, as it’s usually the best bet for a shoe-in that minimizes the model whiplash we’ve seen with this storm. But there are very few I can even recall like that, at least up here. I remember a few promising systems that looked like ntx would hit the relative jackpot but ultimately got pushed to the south or just dried out though. There have been systems that did deliver, hence why I said “higher chance” and not “guarantee” or “too cold to snow”. I will say however, that the highest amounts of snow I’ve seen on the ground here in immediate dfw were feb 2010 and march 2010, both ULL setups with marginal temps.

[Quixotic]

For the most part. There’s sometimes a substantial nose that warms precip to rain and if you’re just below freezing, when it hits the surface, it releases heat and can raise temps above freezing. It’s kinda rare but it was a problem for a couple of storms in 2014-2015.

Heavy rain passing through a warm, moist layer drags some of the warmth to the surface. Lighter rain tends to evaporate in dry air, which lowers surface temperatures.

That’s if you have around a plus 3 deg C type warm nose. This is not the case with this event particularly for large part of North Central Texas. these are very marginal warm layers, barely above freezing. High QPF is what you want to suppress the temps lower in this situation particularly during the daylight hours, You can go from 1-2” to 6-8” quickly with just a 1-2 deg difference in the upper layers

Oh yeah. Definitely not this time. Was just a sidebar about ambient cooling and latent heat release. Informative rather than relevant.

When I saw what my pinpoint based upon the sounding I did kind of give up and I’ll be glad if I’m wrong. Would just like to avoid the sloppy start and start and end with snow.

[wxman22]

The GEFS increased snowfall totals fwiw.

[cheezyWXguy]

Folks will like the latest RAP. Cross your fingers for that one.

Wow, you were not kidding

[txtwister78]

Just to give everyone an idea of how "different" this event is going to look (even by Texas weather standards) and that is while folks in N Texas will be waiting to see if or how much snow may fall, areas across far west Texas will be in the upper 40's to low 50's Thursday afternoon with much higher elevations. So yeah, not your typical winter weather setup by any stretch. Obviously, you can tell without looking at a precip map where the heaviest precip will be situated looking at the surface temp map but some of this will also be due to evaporative cooling initially.

[Lptx]

I’ve seen several reports of flurries in Mineral Wells tonight posted on Facebook

[gpsnowman]

Folks will like the latest RAP. Cross your fingers for that one.

Anyway to post the RAP?

[downsouthman1]

Haven't posted in years. Long stories LOL.

Already virga over NTX? I don't recall that in the models...

[Ntxw]

Folks will like the latest RAP. Cross your fingers for that one.

Anyway to post the RAP?

Here you go!

[Brent]

The GEFS increased snowfall totals fwiw.

https://i.ibb.co/RcYX9FW/sn10-acc-mean-imp-us-sc-10.png

That's the first time I've seen us hitting warning criteria

[Brandon8181]

Folks will like the latest RAP. Cross your fingers for that one.

Anyway to post the RAP?

Here you go!

https://i.imgur.com/gZIvsN8.gif

Do you think the Rap is reliable-ish?

[gpsnowman]

Folks will like the latest RAP. Cross your fingers for that one.

Anyway to post the RAP?

Here you go!

https://i.imgur.com/gZIvsN8.gif

She's a beaut Clark.

[orangeblood]

Folks will like the latest RAP. Cross your fingers for that one.

Anyway to post the RAP?

Here you go!

https://i.imgur.com/gZIvsN8.gif

Looks eerily familiar to a model that’s had this same look for the past 7 days….

This is not our typically warm nose bust type event. Upper level temps are barely above freezing if at all. If the heavy QPF is there, anyone in the WSW area should cash in and potentially quite substantially

[Ntxw]

Anyway to post the RAP?

Here you go!

https://i.imgur.com/gZIvsN8.gif

Do you think the Rap is reliable-ish?

It's the first of it's kind for that model out that far, is nice but like with any short range guidance you want to see it inside 24-36 hours. Just one sample size so far for it.